Many companies seek to attract customers by promoting their products or services as widely as possible. Online video advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for delivering video advertisements to attract customers. Online advertising is often facilitated through companies called online advertising networks that connect advertisers to web sites that want to sell advertising space for displaying advertisements. Such an advertising network aggregates advertisement space supply from various websites (including on-line content publishers) and matches the aggregated advertisement space supply with advertiser demand. Advertisement exchanges are technology platforms used by online advertising networks for buying and selling online advertisement impressions. Advertisement exchanges can be useful to both buyers (advertisers and agencies) and sellers (online publishers) because of the efficiencies they provide. Advertisement exchanges are, however, often limited by the types of advertisements they can buy and sell, their inventory size, and abilities to target specific viewers (e.g., potential customers).
The growing number of users accessing the Internet using video-playback capable wireless devices such as smartphones and tablet devices creates a demand for improvements to online video advertising.